another article on who we’re forgetting in our rush to “save teh middle class”.

Crisis At Home

If you live in affluent neighborhoods you might have conditioned yourself to ignore the significant sector of US society that gets in your face by showing they’re poor, suffering from disease and acute angst - if not worse.

Sure, plenty of tree-lined, suburban streets contain apparently normal, satisfied men and women who work and take children to school. Advertisers understand that underneath the “normal” exterior, these people have anxieties. They prey upon fragile middle class publics by selling them “relief,” from their physical and psychic “pain.”

When a “normal person” confronts a “homeless one,” the “normal” might well say “there but for the grace of God go I.” “I see those people [homeless] and I buy books like on how to increase my financial intelligence quota,” an acquaintance told me. “They scare me.” Yet, Hollywood and television continue to use stereotyped middle class characters to display “The Real America” - the country George Bush sells to the world in his speeches. This made-up America faces “a security threat,” from which “Homeland Security” will protect. Sell that to the homeless!

When mass media chatterers raise abstractions - like is the working class bitter, should candidates wear flag pins or will withdrawal from Iraq mean less security? - desperately poor people shake their heads and laugh. Security means a bed, a roof over it, and a minimal and healthy meal, plus occasional access to medical care.

read on...